Another open fic prompt, I guess? Inspired by this post, though the concept for the below ended up straying a bit.

So, Vince and Durandal have been called over to a research station to help with computational stuff. As his assigned task is winding down, Vince notices a weird encrypted file; he brings it up to one of the staff, is told not to worry about it, and is offered orange juice or some other sharp-tasting drink (which he forces down to be polite). Vince gets hit with a wave of fatigue and decides to call it a night early.

He wakes up the next afternoon to complete and utter silence; just as he's about to leave, Durandal bursts in and explains what happened: 99% of the crew is dead, and Durandal narrowly avoided getting hacked up as well. There's only one human left unaccounted for, and her whereabouts are unknown.

In theory, the plan's simple: locate the survivor, one Ms. Ashcroft (concept art forthcoming?), then take the shortest route to the escape pods (which will take them past data storage and potential evidence of what the crew was up to, and why one of them felt the need to sedate Vince over noticing a single file). In practice, they're being hunted and there are no weapons.

Further details are up to whoever wants to take a shot at this.

(Title explanation: this ended up being a sort of conceptual crossover with the C64 game "Project Firestart".)